


Vaughn Day

by Sinesthero



Series: Titans of Industry [8]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, M/M, cuteness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 10:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18963016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinesthero/pseuds/Sinesthero
Summary: Vaughn is feeling unappreciated. Little does he realize just how much he is loved.





	Vaughn Day

**Author's Note:**

> This is my entry for Vaughn Day 2019. I just think he's (Vaughn) neat.

Vaughn was weary down to his bones. He was wearing so many figurative hats these days that they threatened to consume him entirely.

First and most importantly, he was now the husband of Rhys Everett Atlas, the up and coming CEO of the recently relaunched Atlas Brand of Weapons. This was mostly a pleasant occupation, though still tiring. Rhys was a workaholic and making sure he managed to sleep and eat enough proved a daily challenge.  

Closely tied to the first, he was the Chief Financial Officer of the aforementioned Atlas. This took up the bulk of his time these days, managing the finances and keeping up with Rhys’ break neck work pace. Though he greatly enjoyed the work, managing a department was new to him and there were growing pains.

In addition, he was provider, counselor and leader of their bustling community which had grown in numbers since Rhys’ return a year ago. He even tutored some of the children in math when he could.

Least enjoyably, he was pest control.

So it was on this impossibly bright morning he was kicking up dust as he hauled his truck at maximum speed towards the reported Spider Ant nest. He had changed from his suit to his rugged desert garb complete with echo specs dimmed down into sunglasses mode.

Fiona relaxed in the passenger’s seat next to him with her eyes closed and feet up on the dash. Her hat was tilted down to keep the sun from her eyes.

As driver, Vaughn had rights over the music selection and opted to play his cheerful pop princess playlist to try to lighten his mood, but it wasn’t working.

Beyond being overworked, he also felt under-appreciated. So much was expected of him, sometimes demanded, and for what? The vast majority of the Children of Helio’s devotion and loyalty was for Rhys. It was like a continuation of what his life with Rhys had always been. Vaughn doing every bit as much work but Rhys getting all the attention and kudos. It was frustrating.

He tried to push it from his mind but it had been bad lately. It seemed a foolish thing to waste one’s energy feeling bad about, but he could not convince his brain to obey.

Not wanting to burden Rhys about it, he confided in Fiona a week ago. Her advice was not what he was looking for. She said he should just go on vacation far away and let them learn how much they all needed him while he was gone.

“Why did you come with?” He asked Fiona as they neared their destination. “This doesn’t really seem like your scene.”

“Everything is my scene now.” She sat up, fixed her hat and took a pull from her bottle of water. “I came because you look too tired and I wanted to make sure you came back alive. You’re working too much. You could farm this kind of thing out to security.”

“I do,” Vaughn said, “Sometimes… but we’re perpetually short handed and there’s still that unit with the guys out on med leave from that acid spitting skag attack. Plus Rhys asked me specifically to handle this.”

“You and Rhys are both always working so hard. It’s exhausting to watch,” she observed. She would know. As their asexual girlfriend, she lived in their apartment when she was not off doing mercenary work, vault hunting or other adventures with Sasha.  

“That’s just how it is when you’re in charge of something,” Vaughn shrugged, “If you want it to be great you have to put in the hours. If we keep making money hand over fist things might change. If we can find some new talent to pull in from off world I could delegate more. I don’t know.”

“You didn’t go to sleep until one and you got up at six this morning, worked a full day in suitland,  and now you’re out on bug patrol.”

Vaughn slowed down, starting to see some signs of the small pale juvenile bugs. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

“You’ll be dead sooner if you don’t sleep enough,” Fiona said.

Vaughn shrugged and said “Let’s make this quick. I’m getting hungry.” He turned up the volume on the stereo.

Fiona popped out of the cockpit and climbed up into the gunner seat. “Time to zap some bugs.”  

This sort of run was so common for Vaughn that he was relatively sure he could do it in his sleep. They swept through canyon path like death incarnate.

Fiona aimed the big gun with deadly accuracy to blow up the larger Spider Ants while Vaughn used the front gun to mow down the workers accompanied to the uptempo beats of his pop music.  Within forty minutes they couldn’t find a single Spider Ant still alive.

The egg filled nest was dispatched with a few well placed grenades. The only casualty on their side was that the front end of the Truck was now covered in bug guts.

Fiona returned once again to the passenger seat to chat. “Let’s take a quick sweep up the high canyon road.”   

Vaughn wanted to go straight home, but he liked Fiona and was inclined to humor her since she was gone as much as she was home. It would only add 20 minutes to their drive.

He kept his eyes focused on the road while Fiona looked out the window. After a few minutes she turned down the stereo and said, “Are you still feeling unappreciated Vaughn?” She asked him. It seemed a loaded question.

Vaughn didn’t believe that she had listened or cared much at the time he made the complaint, so the question took him by surprise. “Yeah… but it’s fine,” He lied.

“I appreciate you.” Fiona said with a small smile. “I even miss you when I’m out and about.”

Vaughn smiled at her warmly, “Thanks Fi.”

“Rhys does too.”   

“I know.” He smiled a little.

She cut off any further talk of emotion by turning the radio volume up when a song she liked came on. It was a bouncy, bubble gum pop song, and she started to sing along. This was new. She had never sung in front of him before.

He grinned and sang along with her. Even though the lyrics about dreaming to run away with a cute boy were ridiculous, they were incredibly catchy.

By the time they made it through the second checkpoint Vaughn was amazed to find that in their absence a large party had been set up in the shade of the hulking husk of Helios. It was filled with throngs of their employees and other Children of Helios. In a large tent food was being prepared. A bar had been set up and numerous chairs and tables had been put outside. A large handmade banner proclaimed “Vaughn Day.”

Standing in the center of an open ring of people was Rhys, in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves, beckoning him with open arms. Yvette stood beside him but she had a drink in her hand instead of her usual data pad. Gortys and LB stood nearby, waving. Even August and Sasha were there, which he did not recall them being when he left.

Vaughn’s brow furrowed and his mouth opened. At first no words would come out. He looked at Fiona. “What is this?”

Fiona just shrugged and looked away, though he could tell from her grin she was full of shit. She knew full well what was happening.

He parked the vehicle and hopped out in confusion to walk to where Rhys stood. “Uh. Hi.” His pulse quickened and he could feel his heart beating in his chest as those assembled broke out into cheers and applause. Cheering most enthusiastically, were his own employees, the nascent accounting department.

Fiona came up behind him and placed a hand on the back so she could propel him forward towards Rhys.  

Vaughn took Rhys’ hand as he got close to him and looked up into his brown and gold eyes, “What are you doing?” His eyes filled with tears.

“Welcome to Vaughn Day.” Rhys said as he hugged him. “A little someone told me you were feeling down.”  

“Aww Rhys,” Vaughn sniffed. “You didn’t have to do this…”

“It wasn’t just me… it was all of us… and we wanted to.” Rhys said.

Fiona pulled him into her arms next, “We wanted to cheer you up… and show you how much we appreciate you.”

“You _guys_ ,” Vaughn felt embarrassed now, overwhelmed by the display.  

Yvette grabbed him next, “The children of Helios have a gift for you. We’ll show you in a bit.”

“Oh my god. I was just whining. This is too much.” He grinned at Sasha as he hugged her next, “I can’t believe you came out for all this. Thank you.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Sasha declared.

Vaughn squinted, “Even though I almost got you killed… well technically I did…”

Sasha said, “I got better. You know I appreciate you.”   

“I do, thanks Sash.”

When he came to August, he paused and looked up into the barkeep’s narrowed eyes. “Uh, hey. Thanks for coming.”  

August said, with his usual disdain, “I’m just here to drink on Rhys’ dime.”

“Oh…” Vaughn said, having forgotten how blunt August could be.  

“I’m fucking with you.” August smirked before he caught Vaughn up in a one-armed man hug.  

Vaughn chuckled and reciprocated gladly. “Oh man. You got me.” Vaughn Gave him a pat on the back.

When he pulled back, he took Vaughn by the shoulder and said sincerely, “You helped Sasha and me get back together. I definitely appreciate that.

“Thanks August.” None of this seemed remotely real. He was sure he would awaken later and find this just a wish-fulfillment dream.  

It took Vaughn some time to hug everyone including the robots and the senior management on his team. At some point someone put a cup of champagne in his hand. “Oh… wow… where’d this come from?” He took a sip. It was refreshing considering how dry his mouth had become.

Rhys put and arm around him and spun him to face the crowd. “On behalf of everyone I just want to say that you are our much beloved friend, coworker and protector. We thank you for looking after this settlement so diligently since I…” he cleared his throat, “Since… Helios… We wanted to thank you and celebrate the hard work everyone’s been doing by having a party in your honor.”

Vaughn drank more as he realized he was now going to have to speak back. He looked at all the faces looking back at him. “Thank you all for throwing this for me… I uh… I’m really honored.” Tears started flowing again to his own chagrin. “It wasn’t just me who built this place. It was all of us. Hyperion didn’t… really teach us much about living together peacefully or caring about each other. We had to learn that on our own, but we’ve done it. We’re still here. We’re doing good. Atlas is doing good… so… really, thank you.”

Feeling a sob coming, he turned and buried his face against his chest.

Rhys’ arms closed tight around him and held him while people clapped. It all felt surreal. He wasn’t actually sure he deserved it in spite of his feelings of being unappreciated before. Someone took the cup out of his hand so he did not drop it or spill it on Rhys.

“You okay,” Rhys asked him gently as he lifted his head to give him a quick smooch on the lips.

“Yeah, I’m good… thank you,” He blinked away his tears.

Yvette said, “Before we get our food, drink and dancing on… We have a little something for you.”

One of the lead accountants stepped forward holding a data pad and offered it to Yvette. She took it and said “I asked over the company intranet for volunteers to write out their stories of landing here and how you helped them. How you fed them… sheltered them… killed monsters for them. What I have here is the book we compiled of those stories. 159 people, none of them writers by trade, spent the past week writing out their memories so you would know, and history would know, that You are important. Then I edited it for clarity. I can not stress enough that creative writing is not a big strong point around here. So we present to you, Vaughn Atlas, our book of your Heroic deeds on Pandora.”

Rhys added, “I wrote the forward!”

Vaughn was ready to ascend into the astral plane. This was too much attention on him and it was making him way too emotional. He took the data pad and held it to his chest. “I’d do it all again. Thank you. All this is… so… so... cool of you guys. You didn’t have to go to all this trouble. So, uh, Let’s party!”

They clapped again and music started to play over the loudspeakers. The music was from one of Vaughn’s many curated playlists. A receiving line formed as those assembled queued up to shake Vaughn’s hand as he stood.

“Thank you,” Vaughn said when just his inner circle remained near him. “This means so much to me.” He looked at the data pad and scrolled through the chapter headings. All of his friends had written entries. Others from the children of Helios included such things as, “Saved from Angry Lizard Dogs,” “That Time I was Starving,” “Spider Ants ate my Pants,” and “Mr. Atlas Helped Me Learn Fractions.”   

“Our pleasure,” Rhys beamed. “Were you surprised? You looked surprised.”

“I’m still surprised!” he laughed.

Fiona punched his shoulder, “Let’s get more booze in you. And maybe some food. We have food.”

He grinned at her. “Fiona… this is the nicest way anyone’s ever violated my confidence.”

“Anything for you, Happy Vaughn Day,” she said.

“Let’s eat,” Vaughn declared and put the pad in his pouch for now so he could take his husband in one hand his girlfriend in the other to walk to the food tent.    


End file.
